ing about her subject. With her flat
covered in “a thousand photos” she
jokes that “if anything had happened
to [Kate] I’d have been prime suspect
number one”.
It is the photographs that drive
the book, and give it the appeal to
a wider market. With one of the
world’s most photographed women
there was always going to be an
embarrassment of riches: “There
are pictures that are gorgeous and
so you want to use them, and then
there are pictures that are really
iconic so you want to use them, and
then also you want pictures that
people haven’t seen before.”
But, she stresses, it’s not just a
collection of nice photographs: “I
was really concerned with telling
the story behind her style so a lot of
the time we’d include a picture that
wasn’t the greatest picture in the
world but there was a brilliant story
about the dress. My main focus was
where she was at style-wise in that
particular era.”
Buttolph spoke to numerous
designers, stylists and vintage dealers
(“no one had a bad word to say
about her”) and is very proud that
all the sources are credited. “We
haven’t got any quotes in there that
are ‘a friend said’. It’s all straight
from the horse’s mouth.” Happy as
people were to speak on the record,
she notes with a laugh that it was
still “a nightmare dealing with people
in fashion. It takes months and
months just to get five minutes on
the phone.”
Kate’s own voice
She didn’t manage to speak to Kate
herself although she did approach
her modelling agency: “Halfway
through [the writing of the book],
when we were having chats with her
agency, I did think ‘I’m not quite sure
how you would fit into this book now’
because it’s about other people’s perspectives.”
Fortunately, a worldwide cuttings
search yielded an impressive 30
or so interviews Moss had given to
the press, “which was interesting
because I think we all thought she’d
done two or three”. It meant Buttolph
was “able to add first person
stuff as well, which really showed
where she felt she was at”.
Ultimately, Buttolph’s hope for
the book is that readers will learn
to think about fashion the way Kate
does, rather than slavishly mimicking
her latest outfit: “It’s not a style
guide but a kind of fashion education.
It’s like a mini-version of the
fashion education Kate had.
“You can do it in less then 20 years.
And sadly, without the salary,” she
laughs.
Sage advice
Deception is the theme of Sage’s publishing director Ziyad Marar’s new
book. Catherine Neilan chats to him about lies and balancing the writing
life with the day job
Ziyad Marar does not want to encourage
people to become more deceptive.
Neither does Marar, the publishing
director and m.d. of Sage, necessarily
want to teach people how to spot
others’ lies. His new book Deception
(Acumen Publishing, £9.99, pb, September),
is not a how-to guide to the
subject, though he has had a request
from a men’s magazine to write an
article along these lines.
“When people talk about deception,
they tend to really over-simplify
the situation by talking about people
who are honest and dishonest,” he
says. “What I am interested in is how
much more complicated we are than
we like to appear to be.”
For this very reason, Marar is keen
to steer clear of the term “self-help”.
“It’s not DIY, full of handy take-home
messages. I don’t think self-help
works—if it did, there wouldn’t be so
many of [those books] around.”
He believes there is a hypocrisy
in the language used about honesty.
He says: “I’d like people to be more
honest about how dishonest we
inevitably are. Let’s recognise there
are different breeds of dishonesty.
There are some that are malign and
self-serving and exploitative, but
there are plenty that are benign,
well-intentioned and ethically necessary.
A complicated intermix of these
things is the inevitable part of human
interaction. People who think they’re
honest as the day is long are simply
perpetuating another deception.”
The nine to five
The foundation of Marar’s book—
four years in the making—was his
day job at Sage, where he has worked
his entire publishing career. Being at
the company since 1989, Marar has
seen it grow from just 30 members
of staff to 300 in its London head
office alone. The academic publisher’s
strength is the social sciences,
which has offered Marar “a very rich
mix of lenses on human behaviour in
society”, and ultimately the source of
inspiration.
Starting out as a broader project
on the “complexities and ambiguities
of modern identity”, Marar drew on
the academic material he had read
at work, as well as his educational
background in psychology and philosophy.
“After four years of writing,
www.thebookseller.com The Bookseller | 15 August 2008 19
Marar: the truth
about lies
“People who
think they’re
honest as the
day is long
are simply
perpetuating
another
deception”
it turned into a book about deception
in the last six months,” says Marar.
Deception is his second book —The
Happiness Paradox was published
by Reaktion in 2003—yet despite his
time in pubishing, Marar says he was
“surprisingly naïve” when it came to
writing both books. “I did them very
much from the author’s perspective,
in terms of needing to get it off my
chest.”
Although Deception touches on
how we deceive others, the core of
the book sets about examining selfdeception,
illustrated through literary
and pop culture examples as
much as case studies. Quotations
from Shakespeare and Ricky Gervais’
“The Office” character David Brent
may not seem to have much in common,
but, for Marar, both reveal the
little lies we tell ourselves and each
other.
“A lot of people cling onto the idea
of shining truth,” he says. “I understand
why, in the everyday sense, we
must try to be as honest as we can
be, but to con yourself into believing
that is possible is to actually step out
of the realm of the human into the
superhuman.”
By recognising certain character
traits, and understanding why we act,
Marar believes people can develop “a
more adult way of looking at human
interaction” and can take responsibility
for their actions.
“It is polite to deny the choices we
make,” he argues. “When people say
‘we drifted apart’ they are actually
drawing a polite veil over the quiet
moments when the decisions were
made. If they spot that, they can take
responsibility for the choices they
make in future.”
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